Towards a Foundation for Argumentation Theory

Abstract

What are the constraints on an adequate theory of argumentation and are there any substantive principles that are accepted by all theories that could serve as grounds for adjudicating amongst competing theories? The challenge is to determine whether any set of basic principles will be robust enough to ground cross-theoretical evaluations of at least some of the target disagreements that confound argumentation theorists. In this paper I shall present and analyse numerous principles that argumentation theorists do agree upon (and some closely related ones which they do not) and argue that the set of agreed upon principles presented here offer at best limited grounds for cross-theoretical evaluation.